It is well known that many infants have a tendency to roll over when placed in a lying position, and that safety and other concerns dictate the necessity of confining the area in which the infant can roll. In order to accommodate the infant, and to limit the area in which the infant can roll, it is well known to provide mats or pads with enlarged areas with ridges of resilient foam material on their peripheries. Examples of such mats or pads are illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,712,258 to Eves, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,761,975 to Personett.
While mats and pads of the type described above have generally proved to be successful, they have suffered from their lack of flexibility. Specifically, the utility of these types of mats and pads have generally been limited to infants that have been sleeping, and are in a lying position. These types of mats and pads are not generally designed to accommodate other positions of an infant that has not developed sufficient strength to support his/her body in a sitting or crawling position.
Moreover, many of the mats and pads of the type described above are large and awkward to transport or store. For this reason, portable, collapsible baby beds have been developed, such as that illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,999,863 to Kane. However, these portable baby beds have also generally been limited to single types of usages, specifically, used for an infant in a lying position.